An Inside Look At The Ridiculous Hype Machine That ESPN Turned Itself Into

I gave up on watching ESPN quite a while ago. I eventually abandoned cable and satellite TV all together, so it's not like I can wander by the channel and get hooked by a particular program. I do occasionally see a few minutes of ESPN at work in the break room. It typically confirms my opinion that ESPN is giant flaming pile of garbage.

Here's an interview with a guy that did radio work for them, Doug Gottlieb. It is referred to as an "exit interview" as he talks about his time with ESPN:

I was told specifically, 'You can't talk enough Tebow.' I would jokingly throw it into a segment. 'I gotta find 15 seconds here to talk about Tebow, all right let's move on and talk about Major League Baseball.'

Is it ridiculous how much you have to talk about Tebow? Yeah! But for whatever reason people can't get enough of that story, and they kind of stoke the fire—that's kind of what ESPN does.

They've lost that credibility, a large portion of the credibility of covering news. I think that it's now: ‘What's trending?' Focus groups. You're trying to create things there. Bernie Fine story at Syracuse. Where's that? The New Orleans story with the Saints with Mickey Loomis? Where's that? Where are those stories? Those are big stories that you guys created. You were late on the Joe Paterno story. I think there's just a different mindset from what they're doing and how they're covering it. And they always fall back on ‘Well, Bob Ley covers the serious news stories.' SportsCenter should be covering sports, they should be covering the news. I think they created it with Tebow. And ESPN embarrassed themselves in spending a week out there at Jets camp.

I stopped watching years ago. I couldn't stand the obsessions......Favre, Manning, Tebow, etc. They spend way too much time covering east coast teams, and hardly give any time to the Chiefs or Royals. And I hated all the stupid catch phrases from guys like Chris Berman, Stuart Scott, and everybody else.

I stopped watching years ago. I couldn't stand the obsessions......Favre, Manning, Tebow, etc. They spend way too much time covering east coast teams, and hardly give any time to the Chiefs or Royals. And I hated all the stupid catch phrases from guys like Chris Berman, Stuart Scott, and everybody else.

Not that I disagree with you.

But you said, in the span of about 8 words, that they spent too much time on Favre (Green Bay), Manning (Indianapolis), and Tebow (Denver) while simultaneously saying they spent too much time talking about east coast teams.

I used to have espn on while i got ready for work... at least until it became a horrible sports TMZ knockoff.

I think that's a perfect description...

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Quote:

"He had no teeth, and he was slobbering all over himself. I'm thinking, 'You can have your money back, just get me out of here. Let me go be an accountant." I can't tell you how badly I wanted out of there."Denver rookie QB John Elway, on Jack Lambert, after Lambert and the Steelers knocked Elway out of his first game as a pro (1983).

I stopped watching years ago. I couldn't stand the obsessions......Favre, Manning, Tebow, etc. They spend way too much time covering east coast teams, and hardly give any time to the Chiefs or Royals. And I hated all the stupid catch phrases from guys like Chris Berman, Stuart Scott, and everybody else.

X2

I would rather they go back to their roots and cover sports like "Austrailian Rules Football."